Politics.hu public website to go on indefinite hiatus
After 10 years of continuous publishing, as of January 1, the Politics.hu public website will be going on indefinite hiatus. Following this date use of the Politics.hu brand will be limited to its popular Twitter account, as well as a private (subscription) newswire project currently under development by site founder Erik D’Amato.

The reasons for the shutdown of the public site should not be mysterious. Suffice to say that a free-to-read second-language news website with an explicit nonpartisan mission is ill-suited for an era where most websites covering politics either have partisan benefactors or the massive scale required to make the ad-supported model work. Meanwhile, mounting regulations played a role, though not in the way some may suspect. A decision to locate servers in Germany resulted in constant warnings from that country’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) about comments deemed offensive, and the General Data Protection Regulation Next set to come into force across the EU in May will put further onerous burdens on publishers of small websites.

All that said, if anyone is interested in taking on the website and its mission - to provide a neutral forum where left, right and center can learn about and discuss the very fraught topic of Hungarian politics - please feel free to be in touch via this form. The same goes for anyone who wants to be alerted if the site or a related newswire comes to life.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t already done so, head over @politicshu, encourage others to do the same, and thanks for your interest and involvement over the past decade.